... reading & evaluating the biomedical literature

Tools

• AGREE II: Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (AGREE Research Trust; instrument to evaluate the process of practice guideline development and the quality of reporting)
• CASP Checklists (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, Oxford UK; 8 critical appraisal tools, designed to qualitatively assess: 1) systematic reviews; 2) randomized controlled trials; 3) cohort studies; 4) case-control studies; 5) economic evaluations; 6) diagnostic studies; 7) qualitative studies; 8) clinical prediction rule studies)
• AMSTAR Checklist: A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews (Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa, ON Canada)
• DISCERN: an instrument for judging the quality of written consumer health information on treatment choices (University of Oxford, Division of Public Health and Primary Health Care; brief questionnaire to assess the quality of written information on treatment choices for a health problem)
• Acronym Finder (multilingual and multidisciplinary dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms)

Further reading

• BMJ - How to read a paper (collection of BMJ articles that explain how to read and interpret different kinds of research papers)